Harold Ashby, 78, Saxophonist With Ellington Band

By PETER KEEPNEWS

Published: June 17, 2003

Harold Ashby, a saxophonist whose long association with Duke Ellington began before he joined Ellington's orchestra and continued after Ellington's death, died on Friday at St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan. He was 78.

No cause of death was announced, but he entered the hospital at the end of May after a heart attack, said Russ Dantzler, a friend.

Mr. Ashby joined the Ellington band in 1968, eight years after he first worked with Ellington as a freelancer. He remained the band's featured tenor saxophonist until 1975, a year after Ellington died and his son, Mercer, took over.

With his big, gruff sound and extroverted, heart-on-sleeve approach, Mr. Ashby was unmistakably in the tradition of Ellington's first great tenor saxophone soloist, Ben Webster. Webster was in fact more than just an influence; he was Mr. Ashby's mentor. The older saxophonist took Mr. Ashby under his wing in Kansas City, Mo., in the late 1940's, and introduced him to Ellington in New York City a decade later. ''Ben looked out for me,'' he told The Amsterdam News in 2000.

Born in Kansas City on March 27, 1925, Harold Ashby began his career there in the late 1940's. He then moved to Chicago, where he became a staple of the thriving local blues scene in the 1950's, working with Otis Rush, Willie Dixon, Jimmy Witherspoon and many others.

In 1957 he moved to New York, where he freelanced with various bandleaders, including Count Basie and Mercer Ellington. He first worked with Duke Ellington in the summer of 1960, substituting for two nights for Paul Gonsalves.

In an interview in 2002 for The Kansas City Star, Mr. Ashby recalled that his association with Ellington began early on a Monday morning, when his phone rang shortly after he had returned home from a job. At first he thought the call was a prank and hung up, but Ellington called back to offer work, starting that morning.

''That first job, there were no rehearsals,'' Mr. Ashby continued. ''The singer sang something, then somebody said, 'Play some.' So I went on and played a solo.''

Mr. Ashby worked intermittently with Ellington over the next several years and finally became a full-time member of the ensemble in 1968, replacing the saxophonist and clarinetist Jimmy Hamilton.

After leaving the Ellington orchestra in 1975, he returned to freelancing and frequently performed in New York and Europe with his own quartet. From 1988 to 1999, he recorded several albums of relaxed small-group swing as a leader for various labels. Mr. Ashby maintained his Ellington connection to the end: he toured Europe with an Ellington alumni band in 1978, and his albums and nightclub sets always included at least one song written by or associated with Ellington.

He left no immediate survivors.

Photo: Harold Ashby performing at the Village Vanguard in 1997. (Jack Vartoogian)